I am a firm believer that primaries make stronger candidates. But at some point you just have to stand back, take a sip of bourbon, and sigh “Damn” under your breath as you behold the carnage being wrought within the Republican Party.

The fight has gotten so bitter and acrimonious with only three states chosen because neither side thinks the other side can win. Gingrich supporters understand that the secularists in the media — not the Democrats, but the media to the extent it can be separated from the Obama Machine — will spend six months creeping out independent suburban voters about Mormons, holy underwear, Kolob, postmortem baptism, and views on black people and then, as the coup de grace, Barack Obama will fire up millions of dollars of ads on Bain Capital raiding pension funds forcing the government to cover the debt so Mitt Romney could make millions whether he won or lost a deal.

Romney supporters understand Newt Gingrich will open his mouth.

Mitt Romney will find it very hard to beat Barack Obama because of what Barack Obama will do to him. Newt Gingrich will find it very hard to beat Barack Obama because of what Newt Gingrich will do to himself. That’s the simple truth. Both men will have amazingly difficult times beating Barack Obama.

About the only real difference between the Gingrich and Romney camps is that the Gingrich camp intuitively understands this and is happy to go down with a fighter. The Romney camp is still deluded into thinking a milquetoast moderate from Massachusetts who can’t win Iowa twice in a primary is somehow electable.

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With Speaker Gingrich having won South Carolina, and now polling ahead of Gov. Romney in Florida and nationally, there is one question that keeps popping up. What is it about Newt Gingrich that conservatives voters find appealing? Rush Limbaugh has at least part of the answer:

To those of you in the Republican base, this isn’t complicated. Newt is winning. He is on a momentum roll here because he can articulate conservatism, that and he’s willing to take it to Obama. I have said for the longest time that whoever does that, whoever articulates conservatism with passion, with love, cause that’s love of country, with good cheer. Conservatism is inclusive. Somebody who can articulate it happily, proudly, with good cheer cannot be beat.

Rush is right, Newt articulates conservatism. He does it very well and he rarely misses an opportunity to do so in grandiose fashion. This in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal. In all honesty, articulating conservatism isn’t all that hard, especially when our focus is leaning more and more towards conservative populism.

What makes this interesting is that Newt has managed to win by articulating conservatism while having a considerable record of apostasies. Newt isn’t an empty vessel as Rush suggests. No, he is a vessel filled to the brim with ex-wives and mistresses. Newt is a man who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi, who favored an individual mandate, who, for all intents and purposes, lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So what is it about Newt that allows the conservative voter to so easily look beyond these betrayals?

I attempted to answer this question in a series of tweets last night.

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Today is the 1,000th day since the Senate passed a budget. That’s a long time. Heritage has put a video together to give some perspective on just how long:

The entire Lewis & Clark Expedition? Wow. To mark the occasion, House Republicans will be wearing red “1000 Days” buttons for tonight’s State of the Union address. Will the do-nothing, Democrat controlled Senate take note? My guess is: 1,000 nopes.

Sorry about the sound quality: we’re in the middle of a solar storm today, remember? At any rate, I talked this afternoon with Michael Williams, who is running in TX-25, assuming of course that the courts d0n’t decide to fold up the new Congressional maps for Texas into a variety of paper airplanes and fly them out of the window. The short version is: the maps are being contested, a lower court stepped in to get something up and running, the Supreme Court stepped in to smack down said lower court, and now people are kind of worried that the primaries are going to be delayed yet again. As you might have guessed, we talked a bit on the redistricting controversy down there; Michael even took the time to gently correct me on a couple of things that I was getting wrong…

Michael’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Today is January 24th. On this date in 1899, Humphrey O’Sullivan patented the rubber heel. I don’t really know what that is all about, but it sounds hilarious. Also on this date in AD 41, Roman Emperor Caligula was assassinated. Guy threw some serious parties, which likely would have been more fun without all the murdering. “Hey look, cake! Now I wish I hadn’t just stabbed Bob. Bob loved cake.” Therefore, it is with heavy hearts that we hereby dedicate today’s post to Bob. He loved cake. OPEN THREAD.

Huge Gingrich bounce in Florida | Unlikely Voter
“When word came out of InsiderAdvantage’s new Florida poll, I said to myself ‘I’ve heard this story before.’ Newt Gingrich shooting up like a rocket, but confirmation is needed.” (Note, this article is from prior to last night’s “debate”)

IMF to World: Gird Your Loins | RealClearWorld
“The International Monetary Fund is out with its latest forecast and it expects the global recovery to stall. The above video does a nice job summarizing the findings, but the nickle version is that it’s all Europe’s fault.”

‘A $1 million contract at Freddie was chump change.’ | Jim Geraghty
“A Morning Jolt reader who was a consultant for Freddie Mac offers a bit of perspective on what he saw there”

Obama the promise breaker | Washington Times
“2011 was no Sputnik moment, it was the president’s Solyndra moment”

Congressman grills Park Service on Occupy camping | Washington Examiner
“‘Let me tell my constituents who want to visit DC this summer that they can come to any park they want to as long as they say they are protesting.’ said Gowdy. ‘Can I tell them that?’”

Today’s word of the day comes from Merriam-Webster.
spathe: noun a sheathing bract or pair of bracts partly enclosing an inflorescence and especially a spadix on the same axis.

Thanks for clearing that up, dictionary. I think I understand the word even less now.

Eat The Rich Like Prometheus' Liver!!!! (sarc/

Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments.

(HT: Washington Post)

It’s not just official – it’s officially official. Mitt Romney isn’t just bad. Mitt Romney is E-VIL! You see, according to Pravda on The Potomac, Mitt Romney doesn’t get income the same way normal Americans do. His is entirely derived from dividends and such while poor, humble schlubs such as little, old moi rely on those bi-weekly paychecks.

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It’s that time of year again – time to formulate the FY 2013 federal budget.  Like every family, business, and organization, the federal government must draft an annual budget.  Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats treat this fundamental necessity with callous disregard.

Pursuant to the 1974 Budget Act, the president must submit a budget to Congress on the first Monday in February, roughly seven months prior to the start of the new fiscal year.  After reviewing the budget, along with analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), each house of Congress must pass its own budget resolution by April 15.

Yesterday, the White House announced that they will disregard the law and submit the budget a week later on February 13, even though they had an entire year to work on it.  Actually, this is the third year that Obama will submit a tardy budget.  For those keeping score, he’s only been president for three years.  This might appear to be a minor banal detail; however, it is profoundly emblematic of this administration’s apathy for fiscal prudence and balanced budgets.

There is an obvious reason why there is a lack of alacrity on the part of Obama to submit a budget.  Last year, Obama submitted a $3.8 trillion budget with a record $1.6 trillion deficit, even though numerous tax hikes were included in the budget.  He proposed $46 trillion in new spending over 10 years, with a projected deficit of $7.2 trillion, even with unrealistically optimistic economic forecasts.  To put that in practical terms, Obama’s proposed deficits would have cost every taxpayer over $67,000.  His budget was such an embarrassment that not a single Democrat voted for it in the Senate.  No wonder he is uncomfortable releasing his FY 2013 budget!

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the iPhone’s manufacturing process, why it can only be done in China, and the reasons technology manufacturing will never return to America.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Most people know the name George Soros, the mastermind behind…well, a lot of stuff.

Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

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RedState Morning Briefing
January 24, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

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Filesonic stops infringing. I guess the site’s leadership didn’t want to go to jail like Ninjavideo, or get hit like Megaupload did. People put up with ad-laden, obnoxious ‘file sharing’ sites when they want to download something that can’t be distributed legally, by less annoying sites. Everyone knows this.

It’s a good thing that Megaupload was taken down. That was a blow for property rights. But not all in the anti-SOPA coalition support property rights. They don’t want prudent copyright protection laws to fix the problem of foreign free riders, and want us to wink and nod at infringers. Look, even if we repealed the Sonny Bono act, or even the copyright act before that, we’d still have copyrights that needed protection.

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Mind you, you wouldn’t know that from the Washington Post’s article on the arrest of John Kiriakou. While the Washington Post – from appearances, somewhat reluctantly – reported that Kiriakou (a former CIA officer and Senate Foreign Affairs staffer) had been arrested for revealing names, operations and investigations to the media back in 2008-2009, the paper completely neglected to mention who Kiriakou ended up working for – which is to say, Senator John Kerry (D, MA). Oddly enough, the Washington Post managed to simultaneous note that “[t]he committee had not been aware of the criminal probe of Kiriakou, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the matter” in its article, while unaccountably mentioning that Kiriakou has been leaking classified information publicly for years – including to the, well, Washington Post. One can only guess why a premiere Left-Establishment paper would be so eager to whitewash the record when it comes to protecting prominent Left-Establishment politicians… like, say, John Kerry, who is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (at least until next January)…

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